Spencer Birch is a small, independent firm of chartered surveyors and estate agents based in Nottingham, UK, with a history dating back to 1984. The company offers residential and commercial surveying, estate agency services, and property lettings, positioning itself as a leading local player with a focus on practical advice and competitive fees. The website reflects this business focus with relevant content and clear contact information but lacks modern privacy and security features.
Technically, the website is built on Joomla CMS using older technologies such as MooTools and jQuery, with a dated Artisteer template. The site shows moderate performance and basic mobile optimization but lacks advanced SEO and accessibility features. Integration with external property listing platforms like Rightmove is evident through embedded forms.
From a security perspective, the site uses email obfuscation to reduce spam but lacks visible security headers and explicit HTTPS confirmation in the provided data. No privacy or cookie policies are present, and WHOIS data for the domain is unavailable due to an invalid domain query, which reduces trustworthiness. Overall, the security posture is moderate but could be improved significantly.
The overall risk is moderate with no critical vulnerabilities detected in the content. Strategic improvements in security headers, privacy compliance, and WHOIS domain registration transparency are recommended to enhance trust and compliance.
Scanned ·
NIS2 and GDPR posture
GDPR outside view
50/ 100 · Medium
Checks completed
7of 7
NIS2 Art. 21(2)
a(a) Risk analysis and security policies: Not visible from outside
b(b) Incident handling: One indicator
c(c) Business continuity, backups and crisis management: Not visible from outside
d(d) Supply chain security: Not visible from outside
e(e) Secure acquisition, development and maintenance, including vulnerability handling: Partly checked
f(f) Assessing the effectiveness of security measures: Not visible from outside
g(g) Cyber hygiene and security training: Not visible from outside
h(h) Cryptography and encryption: Partly checked
i(i) HR security, access control and asset management: One indicator
j(j) Multi-factor authentication and secured communications: Not visible from outside
Partly checked
One indicator
Not visible from outside
This scan rated NIS2 with an earlier keyword method that is no longer shown; rescan for the per-article view. Risk management, continuity, supply chain, training, MFA, management oversight (Art. 20) and incident reporting (Art. 23) need internal evidence, and Guard cannot tell whether NIS2 applies to this organisation.
GDPR is indicative only, based on publicly visible signals: Articles 7, 12, 13 and 32 of Regulation (EU) 2016/679 and Article 5(3) of the ePrivacy Directive. Not a certification or legal assessment.
Priority findings
7 findings rated critical or high. Fix these first.
SSL/TLS
TLS encrypts the connection and proves the site is really yours. Weak or expiring certificates trigger browser warnings and put traffic at risk.
High
Weak Protocols Supported
Server supports weak protocols: TLSv1.1
What to do: Disable TLS 1.0, TLS 1.1, and all SSL versions
Security headers are instructions your web server sends to every visitor’s browser. Missing ones leave visitors more exposed to attacks such as clickjacking and injected scripts.
High
Missing Strict-Transport-Security header
Forces HTTPS connections
What to do: Add "Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains; preload"
This scan found 26 issues across 6 checks. Monitoring re-runs those checks daily, emails you when something material changes and records each fix, so you can show progress.
Daily monitoring
Recommended
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TLS certificates and expiry
DNS records
SPF, DKIM and DMARC
Security headers
GDPR and NIS2 posture
Exposed services
Third-party trackers
Security score drift
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Results by check
Each check with its score, findings and the evidence it collected.
How this score is calculated
The security score runs 0–100, higher is better. It is the plain average of the security checks that completed in this scan, each counted equally. A check that could not run is left out: it counts neither as a pass nor as a fail.
Counted in this score
SSL/TLS
47
Security headers
20
Email security
70
DNS health
60
Network security
100
GDPR outside view
50
Average
58
Not counted
NIS2 outside view: Re-weights evidence from the TLS, email, DNS, network and hygiene checks, so counting it would count that evidence twice. Shown on its own.
OffSeq Observations: An AI reading of the site, useful context but not reproducible evidence. Shown on its own.
Findings that cap the score at 49
Each of these is serious on its own, so while any is present the site cannot rate better than high risk, however good the other checks are.
The certificate is not trusted by browsers
The website is not served over HTTPS
A database, remote desktop, file-sharing or Telnet service is reachable from the internet
The page loads a script from a compromised source
The domain registration has expired
SPF authorises every server to send mail as the domain
Partial scans
When the site blocks Guard or most checks cannot run, the score covers only the checks that ran (usually DNS and email), is capped at 75 and is shown as partial, without a risk level.
Risk levels
Critical0–25
High26–49
Medium50–75
Low76–100
Breach exposure
Leaked credentials and lookalike domains from OffSeq Breach. The counts are free; the detailed lists are paid add-ons.
Dark web exposure
Add-on
Leaked records that mention spencerbirch.co.uk, from OffSeq Breach.
No leaked records found
Breach holds no records for spencerbirch.co.uk right now. New leaks arrive continuously, so monitoring on Breach alerts you if that changes.
Business context, site observations and technical notes gathered during the scan, and the standards behind each reference.
Business context
Business profile
Spencer Birch operates in the real estate sector, focusing on Nottingham and surrounding areas. Its competitive advantage lies in its long-standing local presence and chartered surveyor expertise. The business model centers on providing surveying and estate agency services to residential and commercial clients. Revenue streams likely include property sales commissions, lettings fees, and surveying services. The target customers are property buyers, sellers, landlords, and commercial clients in the Nottingham area. The website's partnership with Rightmove indicates a strategic alliance for property listings. Growth indicators are not explicit but the firm’s longevity suggests stable operations. No parent or subsidiary companies are identified, indicating an independent operation.
Security posture
The current security maturity level is basic. The website employs some anti-spam measures such as JavaScript email obfuscation but lacks critical security headers like Content-Security-Policy and HSTS. No privacy or cookie policies are present, indicating compliance gaps with GDPR and related regulations. The absence of a vulnerability disclosure policy or security.txt file suggests limited incident response readiness. No exposed sensitive data or vulnerable libraries were detected in the HTML content. Overall, the security culture appears minimal, with room for improvement in compliance and technical security controls.
Recommendations
Implement HTTPS with a valid SSL/TLS certificate and enforce HSTS to secure all communications.
Add comprehensive privacy and cookie policies to comply with GDPR and inform users about data handling.
Deploy security headers such as Content-Security-Policy, X-Frame-Options, and X-Content-Type-Options to mitigate common web attacks.
Create and publish a vulnerability disclosure policy or security.txt file to improve incident response transparency.
Enhance mobile responsiveness and accessibility to improve user experience and SEO.
Automated reading of the public site. Ratings are indicative.
Business
Company
Spencer Birch
Description
Spencer Birch is one of the leading independent firms of chartered surveyors working within the City of Nottingham and the Greater Nottingham area. Formed in 1984, offering residential and commercial surveying and estate agency services. The firm emphasizes practical advice, competitive fees, and client objectives.
Website uses Joomla CMS with dated template technology (Artisteer).
No privacy or terms of service pages found.
Contact information is clearly presented with physical address, phone, and email.
Forms post data to rightmove.co.uk, indicating partnership or integration with property listing platform.
No social media links detected.
No explicit security headers or advanced security features detected.
Email obfuscation implemented via JavaScript to reduce spam.
No WHOIS data available due to domain query error; domain legitimacy cannot be fully verified.
No adult or questionable content detected; site is safe for general audiences.
Technical notes
Notes
The website uses Joomla CMS with an Artisteer-generated template, relying on jQuery and MooTools JavaScript libraries. The technology stack is dated but functional. Performance is moderate with some asynchronous gallery scripts. SEO is basic with meta tags present but no Open Graph or JSON-LD structured data detected. Mobile optimization is limited to basic responsive CSS. No modern frameworks or hosting provider details are evident. The site integrates external property search forms posting to rightmove.co.uk, indicating third-party service reliance. Technical debt is present due to older libraries and lack of modern security features, posing risks for future scalability and security.
Standards and sources
Reference chips under each finding point to the standard, regulation or specification the finding relates to. They are taken from the official datasets below and mapped conservatively: a finding with no defensible link shows none. NIS2 and GDPR references mark where a finding is relevant evidence, not a compliance verdict. Implementing Regulation (EU) 2024/2690 binds digital infrastructure and digital service providers; for other entities it is the most detailed public reading of the Article 21 measures. WCAG, EN 301 549, European Accessibility Act and Web Accessibility Directive references name the requirement an automated accessibility rule relates to; they are not a conformance verdict.
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